Articles
Ready to get your read on? Dive into the article archive to help you build wealth through real estate investing. We feature top subject matter experts exploring every facet of the industry.
Articles
Ready to get your read on? Dive into the article archive to help you build wealth through real estate investing. We feature top subject matter experts exploring every facet of the industry.
Online Retail Bolsters a U.S. Industrial Building Boom
Every time you make a purchase on Amazon or using another online retailer, you contribute to a real estate boom most people may not notice. “For every $1 billion of digital retail sales, shipping requirements gobble up more than 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space,” reported CBRE head of ...
Hurricane Irma’s Effects Linger in Southwest Florida
When Hurricane Irma blew through the southeast in the early Fall of 2017, it was the strongest Atlantic basin hurricane ever recorded. The hurricane stretched 650 miles from east to west, affected nine U.S. states, and flooded Jacksonville, Florida, and Charleston, South Carolina, before it dissipated. During the storm, millions ...
Freddie Mac Offers Automated Appraisals for Some Condo Buyers
Freddie Mac’s automated collateral evaluation (ACE) program is designed to help borrowers save money on appraisals and make faster purchases in certain scenarios. The ACE program was initially designed to “assess the need for a traditional appraisal by leveraging proprietary models and using data from multiple listing services and public ...
Colorado Mall Fights “Dead Mall” Syndrome with “Experiential Attractions”
As the term “dead mall” becomes increasingly common, the owners and managers of indoor malls are shifting their focus away from anchor stores toward “lifestyle hubs” and other attractions. Food courts are now only the beginning, with many malls offering an entire day’s worth of experiences to attract consumers to ...
More Homeowners Turning to Short-Term Rentals as Investment Strategy
About a quarter of all vacation and investment property owners rented those properties out as short-term rentals in 2017, and nearly a third plan to do so in 2018. According to a new report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), nearly half (45%) of investment buyers report they plan ...
Going Once, Going Twice, Sold: How To Win An Online Real Estate Auction
*Sponsored Content Online real estate auctions are growing in popularity, and not just among investors looking for distressed properties. As the flood of post-housing-crisis foreclosures slows to a trickle, online real estate auctions are gaining more traction among homebuyers looking to purchase a primary residence, too. That may mean more competition, ...
Are Smart-Bathroom Upgrades a Smart Investment Move?
The Internet of Things and the advent of smart little helpers like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Home have brought the concept of smart design out of the pages of science fiction and into our daily lives. Yet for many of us, the idea of a smart home stops ...
The 5-Minute Rule for Wildly Successful Digital Lead Generation
In today's competitive real estate investing landscape, lead generation is essential for growing the bottom line. Wholesalers and fix-and-flippers cannot survive without fresh leads! Deal or No Deal? Quality leads turn into appointments and some of those appointments will turn into lucrative deals. High quality leads increase your odds of landing a good ...
Outdoor Showers Could be the Ultimate Upgrade in Certain Markets
Most investors know the value of outdoor living space these days, but many think simply adding a fire pit or a nice patio will suffice to meet picky buyers’ dreams. While this may be true in some markets (after all, Realtor.com recently reported outdoor projects boost home values by “up ...
Breaking Down the Tools of Technology
I recently read the book, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World, by Eric Metaxas. It is a fascinating read and one that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in the history of organized religion in general or church history specifically. Although I enjoyed the ...
Debunking the “Liquidity Myth” Around Real Estate
When most investors think about their real estate assets, they believe them to be illiquid, meaning they are not easily converted into cash from their physical property form. This belief, dominant throughout the financial industry and across investing sectors, has formed some of the guiding principles that govern real estate ...
3 Ways to Use Technology to Improve Efficiency in Your Real Estate Business
Real estate investing continues to change as modern technology evolves. I personally have seen real estate education evolve from cassette tapes to CDs to flash drives to now being purely online. The wise real estate and note investor will take advantage of technology to improve their business processes and systems ...
NAR Chief Economist Calls Spring 2018 a Season of “Unmet Expectations”
Citing “supply and affordability constraints” for keeping would-be homebuyers out of the housing market this past spring, National Association of Realtors (NAR) chief economist Lawrence Yun predicted summer would provide a “true test for the housing market this year.” Although spring home sales volumes were relatively low, Yun said he ...
Self Storage Developers Concerned Over Steel Tariffs
In March, President Trump placed a tariff on imported steel, which caused the price of domestic steel to rise. Although in the long term, this could be good news for the steel industry and the national economy, in the short term, a number of industries, including sectors in real estate, ...
Vacation-Home Markets Still in Recovery Mode
Vacation-home housing markets are lagging in the housing recovery. According to Zillow Research, markets with the highest densities of vacation homes are 9% below their pre-crisis peak in values, while homes with low densities of vacation homes are now 14% above. During the housing boom in the early 2000s, vacation-home ...
Biggest Gains in Home Sales Remain on the West Coast
If you sold your home in 2017, you probably had owned it for about eight years and likely made a profit of about 21%. This is according to a new report from Zillow, which analyzed national, regional, and municipal data about housing over the course of 2017. The national numbers ...
Real Estate Developers Predict Increased Emphasis on Health & Wellness
According to a new report from the Global Wellness Institute, the number of “wellness-oriented residential, mixed-use, and commercial properties” has risen 6.4% each year since 2015. The Institute went on to predict that this trend would continue at the same pace through 2022. That real estate will have a cumulative ...
Senior Citizens May Shape the Future Housing Market
Although millennial homebuyers are making up an increasingly large percentage of the buying population in real estate, senior citizens’ housing preferences will continue to determine the nature of the future housing market. This is according to the 2018 State of the Nation’s Housing report from the Harvard Joint Center for ...
Better Property Management Through Better Expense Management
When was the last time you rifled through your wallet or the glove compartment of your car looking for a receipt you needed to complete an expense report? If you are a business owner, you may have not-so-fond memories of waiting for an employee to submit expenses, only to have ...
Amit Aggarwal: Refining A Real Estate Platform
Amit Aggarwal joined Auction.com as its chief technology officer in late 2017, but the experienced senior information technology (IT) leader had his eye on the needs of the national housing market for more than a decade before the hire. As early as 2005, Aggarwal was watching the residential real estate industry, ...
New Research Predicts Rent Hikes for Amazon HQ2 Location
Amazon has made the process around selecting a location for its second national headquarters into an extremely high-profile, yet secretive, process. New research from Zillow makes the stakes higher for investors trying to guess which metro area will be the lucky winner of HQ2. Zillow researchers announced that some cities ...
Emerging SoCal Real Estate Factor Affecting Long and Short-Term Rentals
The Southern California market, like the entire California real estate market, is hot for investments at the moment. Both the traditional and the Airbnb rental strategies can be very lucrative because of the factors driving the local economy. People are both moving to Southern California for the long run and ...
Driverless Car Fad Frees Up Garage Space
As driverless cars become more popular and the technology more advanced, real estate design and values are likely to adapt. According to Justin Thompson, a columnist at Forbes.com, driverless cars could usher in an era where people voluntarily “forego car ownership and/or leasing in favor of [a ride-sharing] system.” If ...
Federal Flood Insurance Program to Expire July 31
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a federal program offering flood coverage to more than 5 million property owners nationwide, will lapse at midnight on July 31, 2018, if it is not extended. The program, which has been extended six times since September 2017, is among the only options available ...
Supreme Court Ruling Makes Way for Fair Housing Suits Against Lenders
A 2017 ruling from the Supreme Court says cities have the right to sue banks and lenders if they can prove violations of the Fair Housing Act caused the plaintiff city direct harm. The ruling, a result of a lawsuit brought against Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo by ...
